Two of the greatest 80s college rock bands are back with new albums and we check those out in this show. Sonic Youth with The Eternal and Lemonheads with Varshons. Varshons is completely consisted of covers and one leaked out before the album is actually out; Leonard Cohen’s That’s No Way to Say Goodbye. It’s a duet between Evan Dando and Liv Tyler. This is also a good chance to remind ourselves on how great Cohen is, so we check out two more songs that he wrote: So Long Marianne and First We Take Manhattan. Jack Oblivian has a new album too with his latest band The Tennessee Tearjerkers and it’s called The Disco Outlaw.
Sonic Youth – Teen Age Riot;
Sonic Youth – Antenna;
Demon’s Claws – Mental Revenge;
The Rolling Stones – Poison Ivy;
Oblivians – Happy Blues;
Jack-O & The Tennessee Tearjerkers – Honey I’m Too Old For You;
Jack-O & The Tennessee Tearjerkers – Make Your Mind Up;
Sarah Borges And The Broken Singles – Stop And Think It Over;
The Krayolas – Matter of Time;
Dancing Hoods – Reputation;
Cobra Verde – So Long Marianne;
Lemonheads and Liv Tyler – Hey That’s No Way To Say Goodbye;
Leonard Cohen – Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye;
Warren Zevon – First We Take Manhattan;
Runaways – Secrets.
We begin today’s show with several rebellious songs to help with keeping the spirit of the Zagreb students that are protesting new tuition fees that were imposed on them. Second part of the show introduces new albums for Bob Dylan, Meat Puppets and Thee Oh Sees. Thee Oh Sees debuted last year with their album Master’s Bedroom… In today’s show we check out the new one, called Help, and a compilation of their re-recordings Thee Hounds of Foggy Notion, which came out a few months ago. New Dylan’s album Together Through Life is perhaps the most talked about record recently. Legendary Puppets out out the second album after their recent reunion and it’s cold Sewn Together. Through life?
Today’s show is dedicated to Duane Jarvis, singer, songwriter and session musician based in Los Angeles. He died from colon cancer on April 1st this year at only 51. Another dedication goes to the students of Zagreb who are protesting against new tuition fees over there. Buddy and Julie Miller are for the first time at The Little Lighthouse with their new album Written in Chalk. The Velvematics is a new power-pop name from Akron. Krayolas are back with a brand new album Long Leaf Pine. It’s my favorite album of the season, so look out, I’ll be reviewing it soon.
We have four new names in today’s show. Three represent straight forward garage rock. Elephant Bones are coming from my town, Cleveland. Their album Arms is a glamified deal with good lyrics and well informed with history of pop music. Bazooka Falcon are from New York, but sound more like they’re from Sweden. They have some of that rocking sound that we’ve heard from the Hellacopters and Hives. The third in the new line up is The Rain Bonnets, who I know very little about, but they sound like Iggy Pop with a good dose of humor. Greg Koons from Philadelphia also debuts at The Little Lighthouse. His song Los Angeles Looks Prettier on TV is a modern songwriting masterpiece. His tour-list is very extensive, so make sure if he’s visiting your town. Demon’s Claws from Montreal have a new 45 and we check it out today. And, finally – we have waited 30 years for their second lp, but only 5 for their fourth one – Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Butch Hancock and Joe Ely – The Flatlanders are together again.
Today we bring you two European bands with appreciation for the American sound. Mama Rosin come from Switzerland and play Cajun music. Waistcoats are from Netherlands and they put out one of the strongest garage rock eps this year. Stateside, Neil Young is back with new album Fork In The Road. Steve Earle has a Townes Van Zandt cover album and Mission of Burma has a live ep distributed online.
Today’s show brings a very special block dedicated to legendary keyboardist Augie Meyers, original member of Sir Douglas Quintet who is making a sensational comeback these days with The Krayolas. We also have a brand new CD for John Doe who joined with The Sadies, re-recording a selection of classical country songs. Indie rockers Superchunk are back with a new single and Cat Power covered Dylan on her new EP.
Today’s show is dedicated to one of the greatest songwriters ever – Jackie DeShannon. There is no particular reason for this celebration of her talent, I just felt like I needed some of her music. Back in the sixties it wasn’t so easy to be a female singer-songwriter. Somehow, musical industry at the time saw women either as performers or songwriters. So, women that wanted to do both at the same time had hard time breaking through these barriers. For example, Carole King had to wait for the entire decade to be over until she was given an opportunity to record her own songs properly. Jackie DeShannon was making albums and successful singles through the decade, but typically made hits with other people’s songs (Needles and Pins, What The World Needs Now). Her own songs she very often recorded just as simple acetate demos and passed over to other artists. These recordings are not easy to find these days, but some of these recordings surfaced. Today we have a concept where we play versions of Jackie’s demos and studio versions recorded by other artists that actually made charts. But most of all, it’s a chance to hear gorgeous Jackie’s tunes in her own inspired interpretation. Slight asperity of her voice is unmistakable and paired with her perfect songs, they stand as some of the most beautiful recordings laid on tape… umm acetate.
I finally saw Gentleman Jesse live and I loved the show. A snippet from that show is in today’s episode. Jesse played in Cleveland his new song Word Gets Around and a cover of King Tuff’s Connection. King Tuff is a new band for me, so we check out also their own version of Connection and we introduce them to the Little Lighthouse. Inspired by the new Obits version of Milk Cow Blues, we explore the history of this great song by hearing four different versions of it. Brimstone Howl has a new 45 out, they cover Neil Diamond’s song Solitary Man. New names for today’s show are Palmyra Delran – a powerpop singer-songwriter from New York City, Mark And The Spies, a powerpop band from Netherlands. Also we have DV Nikt art-rocker from Philadelphia and The Guilty Hearts, garage rockers from California. We finish things up with wonderful last year’s Boz Scaggs jazz standards album Speak Low. We caught it as it was slipping thorough the cracks of my forgetfulness.
We have several new artists for the first time at The Little Lighthouse in today’s show. Justin Townes Earle is Steve Earle’s son and he covers The Replacements’ Can’t Hardly Wait. The Buttshakers from Lyon, France cover Brenton Wood’s Gimme Little Sign. Camera Obscura is a fancy new band from Scotland and Ean Eraser is a mysterious new artists with a great new 45″ record. It’s also great to see Joe Dee Graham from True Believers and Scrappy Newcomb from Ian McLagan’s Bump Band in their Austin city supergroup – The Resentments. By the way, I also played a nice bootleg from last week’s Bump Band’s live performance in Cleveland.
Today we examine what’s rock’n’roll and what’s not and what we like about it and what not… at least in first two songs, as Outrageous Cherry paraphrase Stones in one of the standout tracks on the new album Universal Malcontents. We also check out the new album for The Obits called I Blame You. We know the Obits from the 45 that they had earlier this year. We also have new album for Neko Case called Middle Cyclone. Neko’s songwriting is really in shape on this one, it’s a truly exciting new record. Dan Auerbach, the most famous rock’n’roll Ohioan today also has a new record entitled Keep It Hid. Another, less famous Ohioan, but well known to the regular listeners of this show, Derek Deprator has a new band called Ravenscroft and we check them out as the new demos are crawling out of the studio. And at last, we finish out with two new Homestead reissues – Big Dipper and Volcano Suns.